The authorities in Yemen have seized a boat in their territorial waters filled with a large quantity of explosives, weapons and money, according to American officials briefed on the interdiction. The officials said Monday that there were indications that Iran was smuggling the military contraband to insurgents inside Yemen, although they declined to provide details.

The captured weapons included surface-to-air missiles used to shoot down civilian and military aircraft, C4 military-grade explosives, 122-millimeter shells, rocket-propelled grenades and bomb-making equipment, including electronic circuits, remote triggers and other hand-held explosives, the statement said.

If the weapons turn out to include the Iranian-made Misagh-2 surface-to-air missile, as cited in the reports from Yemen, it would reflect a significant increase in lethality for the insurgents.

For years, Yemen has accused Iran of supporting the Houthi rebels, who fought an intermittent guerrilla war against the Yemeni government from 2004 to 2010. Those accusations  including claims of intercepted weapons shipments  often lacked evidence and, up until about a year ago, routinely were dismissed as propaganda.

But after the uprising in Yemen in 2011, the Houthi movement expanded from its base in the northwest  now a de facto Houthi statelet  across the country. It has benefited from widespread dissatisfaction with both Yemens government and the local equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood, known as Islah.

By last spring, American military and intelligence officials described what they viewed as a widening effort to extend Iranian influence across the greater Middle East. Iranian smugglers backed by the Quds Force, an elite international operations unit within Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, had begun shipping AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and other arms to replace older weapons used by the rebels, American officials said last year.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.